June 18, 2008

Dear Friends:

We are eating breakfast in a comedor en Sayaxché, Petén. The hand-thrown tortillas, hot off the comal, are the size of large saucers. The scrambled eggs are fresh, the black beans tender, the peppers spicy.

César Xol (left) and Concepción Maaz record a community radio program.

At my table are five young women who are participating in this third workshop on community radio. In the background we hear the voice of Concepción Maaz, who has traveled 150 kilometers to represent her community at this workshop. Concepción, an experienced broadcaster, pours out her heart in prayer on a morning devotional program, her voice rising and falling, choked with tears. Her lament is in Q'eqchi'. Neighbors have called in on ubiquitous cell phones to share prayer requests: a sick child, a day’s honest labor for husband and sons, protection from temptation for children at school.

The young women listen and learn. They are still becoming accustomed to the sound of their own voices on the air. They are learning that they have something to say, and that their words can be a source of consolation.

Sayaxché is a gritty town on the Pasión River, caught between grinding poverty and the competing agendas of local drug lords, corrupt officials, and those struggling to serve the common good. As with most towns near the Mexican border, contraband thrives. Here, the Christian faith is a refuge and a source of strength—deeply personal, deeply rooted in the life of a local church.

Guatemala has hundreds of community radios. Few of them operate on authorized frequencies; many have been set up by local church leaders. Most such religious radios are operated as small businesses—selling time to local preachers and filling requests for twangy gospel tunes, often recorded by local artists in the local language.

This is radio at its most basic, with no more than a desktop computer, a simple mixer, a microphone or two, a tower, and a low-power transmitter. Community radio fills a space the commercial media have never filled: programs in local languages promoting local artists and local services, and built upon local participation.

In our Cedepca-sponsored workshops over this past year we’ve been moving toward engagement with the community. The first step was to learn to interview. Reaching out to the community means opening up the microphone, breaking the monopoly over the spoken word often exercised by announcers and preachers. We then explored a 30-minute interview format designed to celebrate local knowledge and skills. We had a great radio moment when the students played back their interview with a local seamstress and heard the distinctive sound of her treadle sewing machine in the background!

For this third workshop, as hurricane season begins, the students interviewed local public officials in Q'eqchi' on disaster preparedness. They were anxious to try out two digital voice recorders I had found on the Internet for $50 each. They had quickly gathered the money for the recorders and now were proudly learning to use these tools of the interviewer's trade.

The students say their goal is to set up a community news program. That will take some time and is not without risk. Meanwhile, these radio stations will continue to be spaces where people strengthen their community, their faith, and their identity—in their own language.

Under the Mercy,

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 258